'What is this

During the 18th century many of our ancestors migrated south from eastern Pennsylvania, following a path that became known as the Great Philadelphia Wagon road. Initially arising out side of Philadelphia in Old Chester county, the wagon road pushed west and then south, with its terminus gradually extending further and further from Old Chester. New settlers followed it to its current end, and settled. Later arrivals had to travel a bit further on before they could settle. Gradually a chain of settlements developed as the road pushed west then south, with major communities in the Cumberland Settlements by 1730, along the Valley of Virginia by about 1740, and as far south as Bethabara in North Carolina by 1753.

The focus of these articles is about the personal and family history of the early settlers of the area, and their descendants. Like all genealogies, you can expect to find a substantial amount of DOB's and DOD's, parents, spouses and children, but that's not where the real emphasis lies. Rather, the emphasis is on providing the information needed to help understand their lives, and to help place them in the full context within which they lived---contextual genealogy if you will.

That means we want to present information that explains the historical and social circumstances in which they found themselves, and it also means we want to provide information about the physical, biological, and geographic conditions of the world in which they lived. Thus, when we find that a certain ancestor made a decision to settle in Powells Valley in 1773, rather than on the Clinch or Holston watersheds, we want to be able to provide the reader with the information that might be needed to help understand why their ancestors made that particular decision. Moreover, we want the reader to be able to explore some of the consequences of such decisions---not just for the settler and his immediate family, but for his descendants as well.

There is nothing more important in the process of doing good genealogy than being able to show where information is coming.

If you don't know how you know something, you don't know it

is a good adage to keep in mind. There's a corollary to that which is also good to keep in mind:

If you can't explain how you know something, you may not be believed

While this is not the place for a discussion of "Why We Source", two points are worth stressing. First, we source because its important for us to know where we got certain bits of information; that way, if the need arises, we can go back and recover that information in its original context, and see how it fits with new information. Second, we source because others need to be able to check to see if our answers are right; giving them the ability to double check what we've found and concluded, is the heart and core of doing good genealogy. Ideally, in these pages, we are going to show the sources of the information presented. Ideally, those sources will be original sources. When we can't get to the original sources themselves, we will present the intermediate or derivative sources that claim access to the original sources.

For genealogical data, the emphasis here is on connecting information to primary sources and documentation (the BCG's "original sources"). That's a tough problem for genealogists, because no matter how much time we spend in dusty libraries, getting at the underlying primary sources is hard to do. Mostly, and particularly working at this scale, rather than the usual family genealogy, we have to rely on the work of others who have themselves visited those primary sources, and perhaps published copies of them, or perhaps have generated abstracts that we can examine. This is admitedly a second best approach, because even the most admirable work by others, in which they have carefully reduced thousands of records to a manageable set of abstracts, is not the same thing as looking at the original documents. And as admirable as those abstracts and transcriptions might be, the process of abstraction and transcription inevitably introduce errors. Indeed, even photocopies and microfilm of original documents are subject to reproduction errors. As a result, the term "primary source" is being used in a slightly expanded context. That is, we are considering transcriptions, abstracts, and similar treatments as surrogates for primary sources, and using the BCG's concept of "original sources", to refer exactly to that---the original documents on which transcriptions, etc are based.

Certain other works (e.g., Thwaites' "Life of Daniel Boone" contain conclusions and observations reached by the examination of primary sources, though the specific sources are sometimes not mentioned. We are treating these as reliable secondary resources. Well documented and researched family histories of any description, are considered tertiary sources; though they may contain valuable knowledge and insight, unless they include full quotations of original material, they are not considered fully reliable. When cited, we do so with the understanding that further work into the underlying sources is necessary.

A word on illustrations

"A picture is as good as a thousand words". A good illustration helps to convey a message with an immediacy that text alone can not provide. As a result, we are trying to include good illustrations, be they maps, drawings, photographs or paintings, throughout this project. On that note, we have attempted to find illustrations that are as specific as possible to southwest Virginia. Finding a GOOD illustration that is specific to southwest Virginia, is sometimes a challenge, particularly since we can not normally make use of copyrighted works. As a result, we often find that to get the right image we have to go further afield. As examples, the banner currently used for this project (above), is a wonderful shot of the Appalachian Mountains---unfortunately, it shows a vista in the Great Smoky National Park. The icon used to indicate "Cultural Environment" shows a fine old mountain woman with her "little wheel"---unfortunately, this picture was not taken in the Appalachians, but in Ireland. In both cases, we'd like to be able to use images specific to the area, but so far, these are the best we have been able to come up with. They convey the message, but for the purist, they aren't quite on target. Eventually we like to be on target, but until that time comes, the reader will have to tolerate such pictorial anachronisms.

Navigation

The Tapestry is designed so that one can move quickly from one area to another. Ideally, one should be able to reach any page in the Tapestry Project within two clicks. In practice, depending on where you are within the Tapestry, and where you need to go, a few more clicks are needful.

To facilitate navigation most pages of the Tapestry show a Tapestry navigation pane near the top of the page. The navigation pane typically includes

'TOC

'Banner

A banner image that provides a visual cue as to what part of the Tapestry you are in. The present page, for example shows this image:

Its appearance on a page as a banner is intended to give the reader an immediate understanding that they are on a page associated with the main Tapestry, and not on a page assigned to a specific regional tapestry such as "Old Augusta". Sometimes, however, it will appear on a person page associated with some particular area (such as Goochland County in Virginia, which is not within any of the existing geographically defined tapestries. It thus becomes a "place holder" allowing the user to return to the main tapestry.

Menu

The menu lies along the right hand side of the Navigation pane. It provides links to various pages of use for the particular area of the Tapestry that your are currently within. Different areas of the tapestry will have different menu's, each designed to meet the needs of that particular portion of the Tapestry. For example, pages associated with the overall Tapestry will include a menu that will allow you to move to various pages associated with the overall Tapestry. As an example, this page can be reached from this menu.